What is this lead alloy? Some type of print related? (Hard lead score)

[mha]

Picked up a pile of lead and related stuff, some old caster gone to the great reward apparently. Second hand to me so no real story there.

I am having trouble figuring out what some of it is- first two photos are of the stuff in question. Obviously machine poured with large conical sprues. The alloy blocks clearly attached to something, you can see they have rails or clips on the back of the blocks. Anyone know what they are? My guess is similar to linotype maybe? The blocks are quite large, but don’t seem to have any letters or anything attached to them.

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Then we have some other stuff from the same haul:

Babbitt- some factory cast ingots, others hand cast, mostly just stamped with BABBITT on it, around 100 lbs.
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Monotype, maybe Foundry type? Around 100 lbs. I will add another picture later of this.
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50/50 Solder and some sticks that I think must be pure tin- too light to be a lead alloy.
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Here we have around 1200+ lbs of old wheel weights- no zinc, no steel at all. Then 120 lbs of Linotype pigs, a Lyman MAG 20 furnace, and 2 old “Electro Melter” pots. Also about ten various Lee and Lyman molds, plus 6 additional sets of handles. Plus a bunch of ingots that were already stamped as PB, WW, LT, and a few BABBITT as well that I put in that bucket.
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Not shown is the 3 gallons of mixed brass which mostly was good useable rifle and pistol brass.

I have been unable to find anything remotely similar to the first two pictures, and unlike most of the stuff this old caster had, it is not labeled or obvious to me. He was great- all his ingots were stamped, made life so easy on me. The 3 lead melters probably have another 50-100 lbs in them as well. Once I smelt the wheel weights I expect to end up with over 1400 lbs total of lead, which once I take out the other items (I figured $50 for the Mag 20, $25 for each other melter, etc), I paid around 50 cents a lb for amount of lead it should all yield. Not bad just for wheel weight lead price, but especially good considering all the babbitt, linotype, monotype, solder and tin.

The crazy thing is that I already had a lot of linotype, and this haul had almost no pure lead. So I am going to need to acquire a lot more pure lead at some point!

I am going to go take another photo of the stuff in question- suddenly have an idea...

[mha]

More pictures of the monotype (foundry type?). Anyone venture an educated guess on which they seem to be?

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[mha]

More pics of the stuff in question. The idea I had was wrong. Basically there is a bunch of sprues, they feel a little lighter comparatively than these other pieces, I will need to check that they are not just tin. Some of these sprues were found in with the blocks, so I am assuming they are the same, but the coffee can was separated initially. Possible they got mixed together if they are not the same exact alloy.

Anyhow- there are some smaller keyhole looking blocks, some poured deep and filled out, others not filled out on the cast. Some are marked on the ends “F2” or other markings in sharpie pen. The larger blocks also have a couple marked “F2” so that was a popular marking. A couple have a large “T” scratched into the side, again making me wonder if that just means tin? I have not played with any tin alloys except linotype so I have no idea what it looks/feels like in a pure form. At this point I have zero idea what they are!

My kid is a biology/chemistry type, he can likely help me figure out specific gravity on these if I can’t figure it out myself somehow...

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[JimB..]

Hard to tell in pics, but really high tin will develop a golden color.

Those letters are what I have always called monotype, but that doesn’t guarantee what the exact alloy is.

Nice score overall!

[m37]

think it is mono need to see the bottom


More pictures of the monotype (foundry type?). Anyone venture an educated guess on which they seem to be?

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[Soundguy]

will monotype just be a little more tin/antimony / less lead?

[GregLaROCHE]

You’ve got your work cut out for you to cast all that alloy.

[mha]

You’ve got your work cut out for you to cast all that alloy.

I am a glutton for punishment. Today looks nice enough to get started on smelting the WW. Currently have my kid picking up some solder and organ pipe pieces from a scrap place, but a lot of the pipe sounds like it might be zinc so he has to sort thru a lot to do it. Some good info here that I found about that, but basically organ pipe can be anywhere from 50/50 lead /tin to other percentages, to wholly zinc or a zinc alloy....and I would like to avoid any zinc issues. Sounds like over the years using more tin was just too spendy for the pipe organ builders or something so they started using more zinc.

I will take better pictures of the monotype in a bit.

Still no guesses on what the larger blocks with attaching clips are or were used for? It seems pretty hard compared to everything else.

[Dusty Bannister]

There is a forum member that can make your life some much simpler. BNE does the XRF scan on samples for a very reasonable fee, and you know exactly what your alloy is. I would think you might be wise to just do a site search for a thread describing his requirements and fee, or perhaps a PM and if he is not too busy will reply with instructions for sample preparation and other instructions. Be patient, he is busy.

[mha]

Good suggestion- I am aware of BNE’s XRF service and may very well make use of it once I get all my stuff sorted out better and organized into a more manageable situation. Like I probably need to melt all the unknown composition babbitt into one homogenous alloy, then get the resulting alloy XRF’d, etc.

I am just curious if anyone has any idea what those particular pieces are- I have searched here and googled and have yet to see a photo of anything similar looking.

Fairly sure the monotype is just monotype- no notches anywhere. The photo upload isn’t working for me now so just trust that I see no notches I guess.


Kid came home with about 120 lbs of organ pipe and left about the same amount there as he was unsure on some of it, but he brought samples home to test and look at. Everything he grabbed is clearly good stuff, and the samples seem good as well, will test with muriatic to verify no zinc content before he picks up the rest of it, just as soon as I can find the muriatic.

Smelting WW currently. Fun times.

[jsizemore]

The small ingots in the Folgers cans look like over 90% tin pewter. The melt temp will be under 450degF if they are. The larger ones look to have a high lead content (60%) like ley or lay pewter. That mag 20 is worth more than $100 all day long if it melts lead. I've got a utility lead melting pot like the one closest to the mag 20. Does yours have a heat control and made by SAECO?

[Budzilla 19]

The conical shaped pieces are actually sprue cutoffs from the square plates with the ears attached. ( you are on the right path)Those plates are a spacer behind a planer type blade from a plywood mill operation, at least the identical pieces I have are from the blades spacers on a log planer! The Babbitt is probably #11 grade, which in my particular instance was 86% tin, 10.8% antimony, and the balance was copper. GREAT stuff! Sawmill blade guides are also fashioned from this grade 11 Babbitt. Congratulations on that magnificent score!

[mha]

The conical shaped pieces are actually sprue cutoffs from the square plates with the ears attached. ( you are on the right path)Those plates are a spacer behind a planer type blade from a plywood mill operation, at least the identical pieces I have are from the blades spacers on a log planer! The Babbitt is probably #11 grade, which in my particular instance was 86% tin, 10.8% antimony, and the balance was copper. GREAT stuff! Sawmill blade guides are also fashioned from this grade 11 Babbitt. Congratulations on that magnificent score!


Excellent! And thanks for the info, I knew someone here would have an idea.

Funny- I used to design sawmill equipment with a small Mfr for a while, and I didn’t even think about that being a possible source. I worked on secondary mill variable ripsaws, and a few odds and ends like rebuilding edgers (which turn a log into large planks). Most of our stuff was used in mills that made boards into trim of various types. Never had anything to do with plywood. Did use some babbitt on the edger for sure, but we used a lot of bronze bushings on the ripsaws as the saw blades actually adjusted for each new board coming in for max output.

For some reason I was stuck thinking it was related to the linotype/monotype.... 25+ years ago is too long ago for me to recall most of what we did and why. Glad someone sharper than me was here and knew what it was!


Been smelting WW all day. About 40% done. So nice to just pick out the COWW and not have any zinc or steel WW in the mix.

Did some testing on the organ pipes, two varieties my kid grabbed today appear to be 70/30 lead/tin and 50/50 lead/tin. The three samples he brought of what is left showed that 2 more batches are good to go, probably more 70/30, and one batch has some zinc in the alloy and I am likely going to pass on that batch as I don’t want it if it has too much zinc. I have a piece big enough to melt down though so I may give that a try just to see, I think it is a lead/zinc alloy and not too heavy on the zinc. He will grab the rest of it in the AM. Cost was $1 a lb, got about 120 lbs of pipes so far and another 20 lbs of solder and misc soft lead.

When I can get the photo uploader working I will make a post about the organ pipes. Did a bunch of research and it might be of use to folks in the future who find some. Quite a variety available, and most organs likely have different alloys for different pipes.

Thanks again for the help!

[m37]

looks like the core cavity's from a monotype giant caster but no notch at all
have it tested could be foundry
and mono can be 7-15 8-17 9-19 12-24
mike

[colchester]

Looks like monotype to me. Mono typically has less tin and antimony than foundry type

[mha]

Finally figured out the issue. Photos were too big....

Anyhow- looks like monotype to my un-educated eye.

But I do have some other stuff that I have had a while, very small font single letter type, that does have a notch, so guessing I already had some foundry type on hand.

Monotype:
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[mha]

And some photos of the organ pipe score as well.

The mottled appearing pipes are supposedly 50/50, the more lead looking one are supposedly usually 70/30. The zinc pipes have small speckles, and appear much more greenish in coloration.

My kid went back for more but realized his sampling was from the attachment pieces or whatever, which were a lead alloy, but most of the remainder of the pipes were zinc. So he cut off the lead/tin alloy pieces and left all the zinc stuff.

I melted down some of the zinc appearing stuff- it acted like zinc, high temp required in the zinc melting range, oatmeal formed.

The info on composition are best estimates based on info I was able to find from multiple sources.

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[mha]

And am all done smelting WW’s, ended up with maybe 50 lb of COWW as well so smelted them as well.

Went thru all the “babbitt” marked pigs and broken large ingots, nothing to indicate composition on any of it. They all appear similar and home poured. Some type of lead based babbitt.

The small 1 lb size ingots marked “BM” (I presume for Babbitt Metal), their appearance is slightly different. Think that I will remelt all the larger pieces, and repour them into 1 lb ingots, but keep them separated from these BM marked ingots. Then send off a sample from each for XRF analysis later.

[Soundguy]

great find!

[RogerDat]

The cones in coffee can look like they are sprue puddles. What you knock off when the knock the sprue plate open. The depression in the plate becomes the cone and the puddle is the irregular "base". Hard to judge size in picture but I would say a fairly good size mold of some sort. Might suspect pewter because it would need to be a mold with larger capacity and flow but wouldn't expect down rigger weights to be made from a low melting point alloy.

I would melt a ladle full of the individual letter blocks as a representative sample then get a small sample appropriate to the instructions from BNE to test it. Assume the whole bucket is that alloy. As individual letters the form proves the alloy. Melting it only makes sense when using it to make an actual casting alloy. E.G to sweeten some of those WW's into a good rifle alloy.

With that many WW's to turn into ingots as well as some other stuff where the form doesn't ID the material unless you already have molds you may want to look in the vendor section, member there was selling really nice cast boolit molds, 4 cavity that would run around 2.5 lbs each and stack well. Also fit into USPS flat rate boxes well. Prices are very competitive with Lee or RCBS molds and frankly are less work since they are bigger.

I thought I had a picture of the molds, I don't but that is a picture of six buckets of lead WW's converted to the CB ingots and stacked on a Harbor Freight furniture dolly to keep them portable. They slide under a shelf for storage.
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The one bucket had the clips from the smelting. yes i sold them to the scrap yard along with spent primers and worn/damaged brass :-) waste not want not.

[RogerDat]

Pool acid will detect zinc. It fizzes on zinc. The organ pipe marked as zinc I would have guessed was zinc. I often test that stuff with a propane torch. I know the tin pipe will melt right away, the zinc pipe won't melt easily. In bulk I think I find 40% tin is average for all the organ pipe from an organ.

Last one I scored I didn't bother to try and sort 30/70 for 50/50 and just went together for a big batch of 40/60 I find 40% solder is good and it was a lot less work to sort and melt when I just stuffed all the "tin" pipe in the same pot. I had a bigger batch that I sorted. And visually I was able to keep "like" with "like" and ended up with a couple or three different tin alloys. It didn't seem like it added enough value to be worth doing this last time.

BTW - very very nice score.

[mha]

Well, I had a rough time with the unknown babbit stuff. Basically a bunch of random home poured, kind of dirty ingots. Well when I tried to melt them all together a bunch of the tin separated out. I decided to use some clean motor oil, and keep the temperature down, and got it all back into a consistent alloy. Could not find a good temperature where it was not slushy, if I heated it up too much then the separation issue came back and then it was time to flux with oil again at low temp. So my ingots ended up looking rough, basically how the initial ingots looked....

Melted the supposedly 70/30 organ pipes, and it behaved very similar to the babbit. Slushy, difficult to pour. I think I should have bumped up the temp a bit to see if it would pour better but not separate....

The organ pipe that is supposedly 50/50 was actually really easy to smelt down, no separation issues, poured into i gots easily. I expected more trouble if it truly was higher tin than the other stuff, but instead it was very easy. Also these high tin alloys took a long time to solidify in the ingot molds.

Will find out once I get the samples XRF’d what is really what. Definitely a learning curve, only ever fluxed with wood shavings and candle wax in the past, which didn’t do anything for the tin separation, but motor oil sure worked great. Have to remember that trick the next time I get separation going on- I had encountered it before and wondered if ai hadn’t ended up losing some tin as a result of being unable to get it mixed back in.

Stacked up over 600 lbs in my storage area, lots more to go. What a pain in the neck. Bigger ingots would be nice for the WW at least, but I wasn’t willing to wait on ordering new large ingot molds- had to smelt this stuff down when it wasn’t raining....need to clear all the buckets of lead out of the driveway to keep the wife happy!

[farmbif]

I never fluxed with motor oil before. I've used bees wax, plain old gulf wax paraffin, but wood chips seem to be the cats meow. with a little glob of bees wax stirred in after sifting all the wood chips and dross out.
if you can get alloy XRF id there's nothing better. if you've got all this inexpensive alloy of unknown composition a hardness tester might be a worthwhile investment.

[mha]

Have a SAECO hardness tester, already proved its value a year or two ago when I got a couple different batches of lead but was unsure of the source. Suspected wheel weights and pure, and it showed sure enough that those batches each fell right in the middle of the range for those alloys. Kind of a pain to use as it works best with a cast .358 bullet or similar size, and I have to remember to recheck the hardness after it has aged a while also.

I really need a large (cheap) pure lead score soon. I had had been using a WW/soft lead mix for handgun and 300 AAC loads, then powder coating, and it seemed to work fine. So I haven’t even been using WW full strength. Now I just added over 900 lbs of WW, over 100 lbs of mystery babbit, around 100 lbs of another babbit, over 100 lbs of Lino, and maybe 100 lbs total of soft lead to the stockpile... Way out of balance on what I need for mixing what I want!

[JimB..]

I do not believe that Tin separates out of a lead alloy when over heated. If it did, fluxing wouldn’t reverse is, fluxing extracts oxygen and creates carbon for impurities to adhere to. I am curious what you have.

[Dusty Bannister]

I agree with JimB, you will not have tin separate in an alloy. If you have oxidation from too high a temperature, the elements will form oxide in the same relationship as the alloy. BNE did a series of tests on this to verify that fact. You mention a lot of changes in temperature, but do not offer any actual temperature to show exactly what is going on. Without valid information, you are left guessing and assuming.

If you have an alloy containing antimony, it might be that the temperature is not hot enough to allow the antimony to recombine properly in the melt. It may also be possible that you have reduced the temperature too much so that fluxing is not adequately cleaning the metal. The LASC site will give you good information on alloy maintenance. All good alloy, but methods might need some clarification.